We will not call to account – we are doing so now

In legal terms, these are the most inauspicious of times.
Every day, there is a knock at one of our doors.
For membership of one or several of the prevailing “terrorist” organisations, or, if not membership, giving support.
Or, if not support, for having stuck our tongues out at the ruling party in our social media posts.
Even if we have not stuck our tongues out at the rulers, we end up being detained on the pretext of having brows over our eyes.
Neither jurists with an ounce of sense, nor international diplomacy - nothing can hinder these arbitrary detentions and prosecutions.
For, this country is no longer governed through democracy, but at the say-so of a single man.
We throng at courtroom doors to make record of this truth and to scream out that those on the inside are not alone.
Time is spent demolishing the world’s most nonsensical indictments, inviting the court bench into the realm of jurisprudence and saying, “Let this nonsense finally end.”
We write articles, make speeches and prepare defences.
Those on the inside stand tall and do not mince their words over exposing the rulership’s tricks.
We on the outside try doggedly to explain why those people are targeted.
And then, these detentions which puzzle us as to when and how they started suddenly end one by one in a way that puzzles us as to when and how they ended.
Some of the detention orders are lifted and they release people.
Meanwhile, the same process is started for others.
In a vicious circle, the law is used against opponents like a whip in the ruling party’s hand.
The horrific charges that were laid, the vilification spouted by the pro-regime media and the loose comments made by the President at the time become vacuous.
The trials, which are brought for obvious reasons but remain a mystery as to how they could be brought, point to the ever-deceitful nature of the current days.
The mindset that bombs the foundations of the legal system and subjects the country to this judicial charlatanism grows a little stronger each time from the chaos it causes.
Meanwhile, we keep mouthing the same slogan, “We will call to account.”
With them constantly making accounts, with them constantly fiddling the accounts, we are using the wrong tense in our sentence.
The sole trial in the history of the Republic in which there was a calling and holding to account following the passage of time was the Menderes trial.
But that was also an account in which things were taken into account.
Apart from that, in this country, neither torturers, nor unlawful military trials, nor coupists who have darkened lives, nor corruption, nor secret agreements have been called to account; account for this has never been given.
Account will not be given for that which is happening today.
A sponge will hurriedly be wiped over it, as in similar cases.
So, what is called for is to stop saying “We will call to account” any more, and to tenaciously call for this account immediately now without postponement.
And to change our sentence to “We are calling to account.”